It was quite cloudy and damp when we awoke this morning, but it was not raining, which was just what we wanted. We emerged from our cocoon of blankets—it was down into the 40s last night—and dressed and breakfasted, and I took Tucker out for an airing. And then we were off, with Tucker in tow. It was the perfect day for the autumn Jonquil Festival, even if no one else thought so: cool, cloudy, open jacket weather.

We found a parking space behind the library, and began to stroll around the booths. Tucker was intensely alert, pulled in all directions by people and scents. The first dog we encountered was an Australian shepherd, mostly white with merle markings, and his name was Tucker, too. It's a small festival, so we ran into the other Tucker several times. Our Tucker got petted several times by people with small children, got barked at by a nervous pug, and tried to mark everything in his path. We admired jewelry and gadgets, and then stopped by a balsamic vinegar booth. We were out of our peach vinegar, so we bought that (now we don't have to drive up to Woodstock) and also some plum vinegar (which should taste smashing on lamb and beef), and a small bottle of spicy lime for James. We sampled huckleberry honey and dips, talked to some people with a shy border collie, walked past the rescue greyhounds, and looked at the Smyrna Library book sale books (here James bought some pecans for charity as well). As we were coming around we found a booth where a man was selling inexpensive clockworks in handmade wooden frames.

Now, way back when I was living at "the Cubbyhole," my studio apartment, and there was a Remington store at Perimeter Mall, Mom bought a little faux gold mantel clock with a rotating pendulum at the bottom which looked like the real one my Confirmation godmother Margaret Azzoli had in her parlor. Mom always adored that clock but couldn't afford an antique like that. When Mom passed, we took the little mantel clock home and it's been on our own mantel ever since. But the pendulum broke several years ago, and it's been going through batteries like water, sticking on certain hours, and running slow. I'd checked into lookalike mantel clocks online and they were very expensive and all plastic, and made in China.

James saw the look on my face when I came to one clock with an "aged" face set in dark walnut with a maple leaf cut on one side. He bought it for our anniversary, and when we got home I put it on the mantel. It fits right in with the fall decor and looks like it's always been there. The only thing wrong with it is that it takes "N" batteries and I will have to go to Batteries Plus for those.


We had some "island noodles" for lunch, chicken with vegetables and long noodles. It was very salty and I was equally sorry for suggesting it. We should have just had Williamson barbecue. James picked up some jambalaya for dinner and we were about to leave when we noticed a frisbee dog exhibition starting. This was just a short show, but there were three of the cutest dogs: a little smooth-haired bullet of a terrier-type dog, a border collie, and a red heeler. They all did a funny show where they deliberately disobeyed and had the crowd in stitches. Tucker completely ignored them!

By the time we got home he was completely "tuckered out" and sacked out on James' recliner for the rest of the day. I put the clock up on the mantel.

We were still both in good spirits, so we transferred all the junk from the box of Goodwill donations to the trunk of my car and took them all to the donation center. This gets rid of the Soda Stream, which James doesn't use anymore because the syrup changed manufacturers and got more expensive, a whole collection of small Hallowe'en decorations, a tailed mouse, plastic Christmas dishes, and a bunch of other little things.

Finally we strayed into dangerous territory by going to Kroger on a Saturday afternoon. However, it was less hazardous than we expected and we emerged unscathed. We came home to play about on the computer, watch some television, eat a little supper. James spent part of the afternoon and some of the evening downstairs in the "man cave" for the first time in a long time, and I worked on a tiny cross stitch "Colonial Sheep" that I bought so long ago in the gift shop in Yorktown.

Labels: cross stitch, dogs, errands, events, food, shopping, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:05:00 PM

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I ought to call this one "weekend without James," because he was not home for about half of it. This was no fault of our own, and we did the shopping at Publix after dinner Friday night, so the bulk of the shopping was done and what time we did have together was maximized.

On Saturday we woke up after getting a full eight hours sleep, and after breakfast and some dog romping, James went off to his monthly club meeting. (He brought last year's Hallmark jet ornament, which was 72nd scale—"his" scale—and which he'd decorated in appropriate decals. Apparently it was a hit with the guys and he wants to do the same with this year's F-16.)

I am hoping to get back into both my art and my calligraphy, and have been assembling new supplies piecemeal with coupons. I already had the Sharpies I'd bagged at a Really Good Sale at Office Max and a few coloring books to whet some creative movement, and then had bought a set of fifty Crayola colored pencils with a coupon last weekend. Today I went to Hobby Lobby intending to get some sepia pens, but the only package they had had been opened, so I settled instead for watercolor pencils and a clever brush with a water reservoir. I have never had patience with watercolors and end up making my paintbox cakes all muddy, but I love Susan Branch's work and hope the watercolor pencils will give some inspiration. They have a nice paintbox if I want it, but not as good as the British one Mother bought me so long ago with all the fascinating paint names—wonderful names like "chrome yellow," "red ochre," "vermilion," "crimson lake," "burnt sienna," etc.! Got a good eraser, and two tiny cross stitch kits as well.

Had a $10 off $30 coupon for Petsmart, perfect for a 33 percent off bargain, so I made my way across the street to the next shopping center. Got two bags of Tucker's food and some puree to reach the $30 limit, said hi to the budgies, including the wide-eyed babies with stripes lined down their forehead, and met the cutest Boston terrier puppy (brown and white rather than the usual black!) named Champ.

I thought there was a 40 percent off coupon to Michael's, and since I was almost closer to Hiram than to any other Michael's location, I just went there. Turned out it was a 20 off all including sale items, so I just got a pencil sharpener, but finally found buy-one-get-one free frames for the two Sherlock prints I bought last year at 221B Con. They are an odd size, 11x17. Came home by Barnes & Noble, but no clearance goodies left except small games, and stopped at Dragon 168 to pick up lunch.

Lunch was great, but I had to roll my eyes at myself. I'd forgotten 11x17 frames are actually 10 1/2 x 16 1/2. The prints are exactly 11x17, so the frames were too small. Luckily, James was wanting frames, too, for some prints he received at Christmas, so, after he arrived home from the meeting, we went back out to Hiram, exchanged my frames for the right size, and James got some of his own. I also picked up some cheap brush pens. Figure they won't last long but I can practice with them. Then we had supper at the IHOP and saw an absolutely spectacular sunset on the way home.

I started one of the little kits tonight while watching Britcoms. I'd bought it because it reminded me of someone, so I wanted to work on it to send to that person. Much later, when my stitching hand got sore, I wandered into my craft room, intending to finally put the prints in the frames.Arrgh! One of the frames was broken! It was not broken at Michael's, so all I can figure is that on the way home (my frames were sitting between us in the truck) one of us messed it up while buckling seatbelts. The frame had split at one corner and the plastic was cracked in two places. I fixed the frame up with superglue to use anyway; they're worth $16 each and I can't afford to replace it. I'll have to live with the cracks. (The second print I left to frame until Sunday. That frame was fine. Disappointing.)

James was working at home on Sunday, so he set up the computer before bed and it worked fine. But this morning, as I was getting up after a rather sleepless night with one of those nagging dreams, he came in the room disgusted—now he couldn't get it to connect to his work network, so he had to go in. The stupid dreams had made me very foggy. (I can't explain these stupid dreams because I never remember them well when I wake up, but this one involved two items with very similar serial numbers that did two different things. I kept getting them confused and doing them the wrong way.) Anyway, I wanted to get to Kroger early and was delayed by a trip to the bathroom, so I skipped breakfast altogether. Yeah, I know, that didn't make the foggy any better. Picked up the milk and some pork for dinner tomorrow night and the usual burritos and a newspaper and two Flonases for James since they were on sale plus I had a coupon, too. It was a beautiful, cool morning—I even had to put on a flannel shirt to walk Tucker—so I just stuffed everything in an insulated bag and went on.

By this time it was 10 a.m. and Office Depot was open, so I stopped there for a flash drive to back up photographs, checked out the Goodwill next door (mostly clothes and junk), then went across the street to Michael's. Today was 30 percent off everything, no sale items. I picked up the bright metallic pens I saw yesterday, a children's drawing pad (for scribbling) because they were half off, and some fluorescent pencils (also half price). I think I have my art kit topped off now! And, I confess, I stopped at Best Buy to check out the phones (the Droid Turbo 2 is very pretty) and the Surface Pro 4. The paint feature is fabulous. You pick a tool, a texture, and use the pen, and it is pressure sensitive. I was oil-painting a picture of a red panda.

Came home and re-watched the season finale of Big Bang Theory (like Penny, I am tickled with the idea of Leonard's father and Sheldon's mother hooking up) and finally watched the season finale of Sleepy Hollow. Bit of an anticlimax; Abbie got axed less than halfway through (the takedown of the Hidden One was pretty blah), then we got a "great beyond" sequence right out of the series finale of Quantum Leap, the Headless Horseman was resurrected just to kill off Pandora, and now Ichabod is being pursued by government types because George Washington set up a super-secret paranormal defense organization way back when. Hmmm. Well, I'll keep watching because Tom Mison is very, very cute. But I wonder which way they are going now. The show was really about the chemistry between Ichabod and Abbie.

Finished the cross stitch kit this afternoon, as well as a project for a gift and tidied up my craft room yet again—there are so many things in there I just have room for nowhere else, like a shape cutter for scrapbooking, and a gift someone sent me that I want to use, but we don't eat that kind of food anymore, and I wish I could put them anywhere else!—and got the new pens all corralled.

When James got home we had the leftover chicken stirfry for supper and watched the last three Hawaii Five-0 episodes of the season. The Steve and Danny bromance reached its peak when Steve got shot and Danny donated him part of his liver. I'm wondering of they ended up with this episode because they didn't know if the series would be renewed or not. At least Gabriel Waincroft is dead! Now I just have to catch up on Elementary.

Wonder if Alaska: the Last Frontier is coming back. Usually it has started up again by the time the network series are having their finales.

And finally the penultimate Call the Midwife of this season. I know the spoiler, so I am doubly sad the season is coming to an end.

Labels: art, cleaning, cross stitch, pets, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:30:00 PM

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Our original plan was to drive into Knoxville today.

However, by the time breakfast was over, it was already 10:30, and since I still had to call and make reservations for the dinner theater one day this week (we get a free ticket to the Lumberjack Feud, which I wanted to see last year, but we were too damn sick), I had decided to do it after breakfast and thought, well, we'll do that tonight. And since we picked the early show, we had to be there by 4 p.m.

So we will get up earlier tomorrow and go then.

Today we started out by driving out to the needlework store in Wears Valley; I would drive out to Wears Valley anyway, without the shop, since it's such a pretty ride. Must be lovely at peak! It is cold this morning, but without the snow and the wind, nothing like yesterday, although I should have started the car before bed last night, as it started very sluggishly.

I got a couple of Prairie Schooler patterns, two "Stoney Creek" magazines (no one in Atlanta sells them), an old "Just Cross Stitch" with a pretty autumn band sampler, a magnetic wrist bracelet to hold needles, and some two-ended needles. I always feel nostalgic when I walk in because there's a tatting display right in the doorway; my mom did shuttle tatting for years.

Next we drove out to the Russell Stover outlet store, which is almost at I-40. James found very little in sugarless candy that we can't get in Walmart, but we got our Christmas chocolate for the season; eating one for dessert a night I think we will still have enough by Epiphany. I bought a box (24) of the peppermint bark snowmen, a box of those wonderful dark-chocolate covered gingerbread Santas, and a half-dozen each of dark-chocolate covered caramel and dark-chocolate covered mint. Also picked up cashew brittle and some candy for friends.

Heading back in from the outer edge of the Parkway, we stopped at Smokey Mountain Knife Works. I can't describe this as a Bass Pro or Cabela-like shop; they don't carry fishing gear or a lot of camping stuff. They do have knives, from Case to other models, plus guns, tarted-up knives (with sequins and junk), some camping and camo things, specially-made swords from fantasy movies like The Lord of the Rings, and downstairs there is gourmet food, barbecue paraphenalia, kitchen gadgets, etc. The neatest part of the store is the Relic Corner, which carries old things you can buy: Civil War trash found on battlefields (bullets, belt buckles, etc.), older relics like Revolutionary War things (Hessian buttons, musket balls), fossils, 19th Century medicine bottles, dinosaur coprolites, fragments of mammoth bone, etc. Very neat.

We left there early enough to stop at Kroger to get James more Coke Zero, then arrived at the Lumberjack Feud in good time. They saw James' Rollator and put us a front row so we didn't have to climb stairs, so we got a really good view of all the action. All the actors are actual winners of lumberjack contests (men and women), and they do old-fashioned lumberjack activities like log rolling, speed tree climbing, etc. in the framework of a corny but entertaining show about two feuding lumberjack families, the Dawsons and the McGraws. You also see the "Timber Dogs" (three Labradors and what looked like a redbone hound) do several feats like water jumps and fetching balls while walking on logs, and a black horse named Bill came out several times to deliver logs on skids.

We got the Christmas show, in which a maniac elf named Elfred comes from the North Pole to Pigeon Forge, where he's found the perfect Christmas tree. Both families want to cut it down, since, since the National Park opened, they've been out of work. So the ranger decides that a contest will be held to decide who will cut down the tree. This leads into demonstrations with climbing, chopping, two-man sawing, one-man sawing, chain saws, and finally the log rolling. Santa Claus appears via "Elftime" to say both families will benefit if he builds a road to the Park (one family will open the 17 pancake houses in the 3 mile stretch and the other will open amusements which will make them all rich), so everyone technically wins.

We were served dinner in "bear proof" tin lunchboxes that latched shut: a complete holiday dinner of turkey, dressing, ham, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and tri-color corn, with a roll each, a drink, and a surprisingly not overly sweetened apple cobbler. The pre-show was a bluegrass trio singing standards and Christmas music. It was a lot of fun. We even got a show souvenir, a "lumberjack cookie" (a slice of wood sawed in one of the contests) that I got autographed by all of the Dawson performers, the Ranger, and the maniac Elfred.

Yeah, and we bought the photo they took of us, just like last year at Biltmore. In fact it's the same outfit who takes the pics at Biltmore.

Back to the cabin for an early bedtime...I hope!

Labels: cross stitch, food, fun, shopping

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:02:00 PM

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